


Black Moon Blood

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Dark Fantasy, Gen, Infiltration, Mission Fic, Missions Gone Wrong, Monster Hunters, Occult Organisations, Original Fiction, Partnership, Rescue, Torture, Uneasy Allies, Urban Fantasy, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 22:57:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: In which a researcher and her vampiric companion tackle moon slugs and enforced partnership in the mountains.





	Black Moon Blood

It was cold out. Well. Bluntly, it was freezing. They were well above the tree line here, the night sky crystal clear and icily cold above them. It was nearly a relief, though. Danica’s entire body burned, the pain of various cuts, abrasions and chemical burns throbbing beneath her snow suit. The cold sapped the pain. It was almost pleasant.

She tipped her head back against a snow drift. The moon leered angrily down at her from the sky. Since it no longer had a blood-red tint to decorate it, she no longer cared. The snowscape flickered red-orange from the burning chemical plant in the valley below. It was a nice, friendly colour. The colour of victory, one might say. If one was romantically inclined.

Danica was not, generally. She didn’t think her companion tended to be either. At the least, he didn’t strike her that way.

She glanced over at him. He was sitting upright in the snow, his hastily bandaged hands balanced lightly on his knees, staring absently out across the valley. He’d gone without a snow suit himself. Well enough, she supposed. He didn’t need one. The thin black of his clothing stood out all the more for it, though. He looked foolish. Or unnatural. Which, again, she supposed was only fitting.

She turned her head to look back at the sky again. They had done good work, she thought. Lying there, waiting patiently for extraction, hoping mildly that it arrived before she froze. They had done good work, this Grigore Ionescu and her. She was satisfied with it. She was maybe even pleased. She hadn’t expected that. He was a good partner. She didn’t think anyone had imagined that was possible.

Especially when most of them had thought that he would kill her.

She laughed faintly to herself. She felt more than saw him look towards her. Not that she needed to see him. He would look bemused, she knew. Amused as well, that glimmer of dark humour in his black eyes. She was very amusing to him, she thought. It was well enough. He was somewhat amusing to her as well. Such a satisfying monster. She was glad to have been paired with him after all.

Though she did wonder if he would be inclined to say the same. If she had satisfied, or exasperated. An interesting question.

It was difficult to tell. She didn't know him well enough to guess his standards for such things. He was such an ancient thing. He looked down on them all with such wry, cynical amusement. She didn't imagine she had strayed too far from that. Though she had surprised him a time or two down there. She had lifted his eyebrows here or there. 

Deciding to let herself be taken. He hadn't expected that at all. Or, she thought, approved of it. It had surprised him.

It had surprised her as well, to an extent. It wasn't something that she would normally need to expect from her operations. She was a researcher almost exclusively, much more than a field operative. She had only rarely entered the field before, and never on anything that might be considered an active operation. Allowing herself to be tortured was not a thing she would have thought to plan on in advance of the necessity.

It had been logical, though. Once the extent of their security had become apparent, as well as the frenetic increase in the pace of their activity. They were preparing for something, and rapidly. Who knew how much time they had left? There were few choices, once she had narrowed down the options for their nature enough that only close observation could further finalise a solution.

Moon slugs. Such a thing. Such a marvellously obscure thing. In all her years of occult research, she'd never encountered anything close to them before. The observatory had given them partially away, of course, the centrality of it to their operations enough to hint very strongly of their nature, but there'd still be such a range of things they might have been. Without knowledge of where that telescope had pointed, precisely, there would have been little to no way to know for sure.

So it had been logical to allow herself to be taken. As the expert, she was the one who'd needed to see, and as the experienced infiltrator, he was the one who'd have to get either her or at the least her knowledge out again afterwards. It had been logical. Eminently so.

It hadn't been overly risky, either. From an operational standpoint, at least. Those remains they had found, those that had alerted them to the problem in the first place, always showed evidence of a considerable amount of time between capture and death. Though the uptick in operations at the facility had been cause for some worry, there still had been every indication that they would keep her alive at least long enough for him to reach her and acquire her conclusions. Operationally, the tactic had been sound.

It also hadn't disturbed her overmuch. Danica didn't think so, at least. She stirred herself slightly in the snow, cataloguing the aches. Survivable, all of them. Acceptable. She'd been somewhat nervous. Or anticipatory, maybe. Something, some mingling of fear and curiosity beforehand. A new experience. Fearful and curious. She had anticipated it.

It hadn't been much, in the end. Unpleasant. Painful. Undesirable. All to be expected, really. Not overly worthy of dread, though. It had been _fascinating_.

Not the pain. That had simply been unpleasant. But the creatures who had dealt it. Those, _those_ had been interesting.

And her rescue. That had been interesting too.

She looked at him again. At his hands, at the cloth and dirt wrapped hastily around them. Or, she meant to look at those. She caught his eyes instead. Dark. Thoughtful. Bemused. She looked at him, and caught him looking back.

Well. That was interesting. She leaned up on her elbows, propped herself up to look at him more clearly. He raised an eyebrow in response. Wry and cool, in the still-raging light of the chemical fire. He leaned forward, and swept his gaze across her. 

"You are well?" he asked quietly. With amusement, more than concern. He eyed her thoughtfully. It was an unusual experience for her. She didn't usually garner more interest than her personality immediately threw off again. But then circumstances were unusual. And he was not her typical conversation partner.

"Well enough," she said, also wryly. "And you?" She nodded at his hands. "Was it enough, or could you use another smear or two?"

Blood. Her blood, used to heal himself. The reason they'd all thought that he would kill her.

He was, after all, a vampire.

It was interesting to realise that you had been sent somewhere to die. Or, not necessarily sent _to_ die, but sent with the expectation that you would. She'd wondered at the time why Mihai's face had been so rigid as he informed her of her assignment. Why he'd flinched ever so minutely whenever her prospective partner so much as curled his lips. She'd realised quickly enough that he was afraid. It had taken some time into the conversation before he'd admitted as to _why_.

Or rather, until Ionescu had grown impatient and offered enough of a demonstration of his nature to force the issue.

They needed her knowledge, Mihai had explained rapidly. Desperately. They wouldn't send her but for that. Her research was too valuable. But the bodies were piling upon them, and there were signs that they didn't really have time to find less valuable sacrifices.

He was fond of her. Mihai. And too soft for a lot of their work. She'd thought that more than once. Enough to wish they'd found someone else to deliver her assignment to her.

Like Ionescu himself. That would have done. She was fairly sure he would not have dithered near so long.

He didn't now either. He smiled, slightly. A lift of his lip against his teeth. He glanced down at the mummified clubs of his hands, and shook his head in some amusement.

"It's working just fine," he murmured, rubbing them idly against each other. "I wasn't sure it would. I've never been burned by moon blood before. But the earth is good, and the blood better. It won't be long before they're good as new."

Danica laughed faintly. Pleased. "Well, good," she decided. "That's very good. You'll look less ridiculous then."

Not that he looked overly ridiculous now. He _should_ , but he didn't. The slight curl of his frame, the wrapped balls of his hands, the thin black of his pullover against the snow. He should have looked idiotic. Memory intervened, though. He hadn't looked foolish in the facility. Not at all. 

It was such a thing, to see a vampire at work. She'd seen footage before. Corpses after events. Never the thing itself. It was an _experience_. He'd pulled her away from the wall. Ripped steel restraints straight out of the stone. He'd hinted at that strength before the mission. Bent the edge of a steel table, to threaten and to demonstrate. It had been different to see it up close. And to see it bent against those creatures ...

'Slugs' was something of a misnomer, she thought. She understood the impetus, but it didn't quite describe the actuality. It had several of the right qualities. The glistening, the noisomeness. The bulk, the ponderance of movement. The moon creatures had limbs, though. And mouths. And mouthing limbs. They burned when they bit. She had the marks to prove it.

He'd torn them apart. Ionescu. Silent, placid ferocity. Slicing through them with nothing but his bare hands. He'd burned for it. Wept black drops of their blood and melted droplets of his own flesh onto the floor, his hands a weeping ruin. It hadn't stopped him. Hadn't so much as slowed him down.

And 'slug', inaccurate a name as it may have been, had neatly pointed her to her solution in turn.

Ionescu had been incredulous. The second surprise of the evening, the second time he'd failed to anticipate. But that had been why they'd sent her. The reason they'd sacrificed her, for all her value to them. She was _good_ at this part. She'd been battered and burned, less ambulatory than she would have liked, but it had all been worth it to see them up close. To _identify_ them up close. Moon slugs. Black moon blood. They were written about so rarely, encountered only once in a blood-red moon. To have dealt with them herself ...

"You're smiling," he murmured. Recalling Danica to the present. To the snow, and the chill, and the aches and pains of her body. To his slim form, sitting a little ways away, and the amused darkness of his eyes. "You're very pleased."

It wasn't a question. Not quite. She answered it anyway.

"I am," she agreed, letting go her elbows and lying back into the snow. Smiling up at the disgruntled moon. "I'm very pleased. I enjoy this, you know. Problems like this. I find it satisfying to solve them. I find it ... pleasing."

She'd never been destined for it. She was built for other things. She'd been told that many times over the years. Sometimes well-meaning, sometimes not. Her family were too poor to let her hope for study. She didn't look the type, either. A friend had told her that, and meant it as a compliment. When she'd grown into herself. He'd told her that she had a body built for a factory production line. A blunt, flat face, and an air of indefatigable heft. It had been meant as a compliment. She'd taken it as one as well.

But she'd wanted more. The things in the corners of the world. At the edges of possibility. She'd seen things, from the corners of her eyes. She'd wanted to know them better.

And now she had libraries. Artefacts. Dissections. Now she had the reach of a global organisation, and the company of a vampire by her side. Not entirely willingly, in either case, but she had them nonetheless. She had paid for them, in perhaps more pain than she had initially planned, and they were hers to examine for as long as she had strength.

And she had so much strength. In truth. For the right cause, she was indefatigable.

"... Such a thing you are," her vampire said softly now. Her unwilling partner. Grigore Ionescu, who had helped her put salt and magic and fire to a facility full of monsters. Grigore Ionescu, who was such a pleasing monster himself. "Tell me, Ms Lupaș, are you always so valiant in pursuit of your goals?"

Danica blinked up at the stars. For his _tone_ , more than anything else. For the way he said it. Amused and bemused and upset. Disgruntled by her enjoyment. By her _valiance_.

And she knew what it was, too. She knew what it was coming from. His tautness when they'd fetched up together in the aftermath of the explosion. His expression when she'd scooted closer to survey the ruin of his hands. A clinical examination. She'd been fascinated, both by the effects of the moon blood and by his lack of affect in the face of it. He'd showed her his teeth in a smile, and explained the solution to it in a clean, bright tone. Earth and blood. His grave soil in their cache on the rise. And blood ...

She'd had more than enough to offer him, at that point. All over her body. Though they had liked to focus on her torso and arms, for some reason. She'd noted that on the corpses they'd left as well. They didn't seem to understand legs very well. Upper limbs and torso were their preference. The head baffled them too. They'd grasped hers. Studied it. They'd limited the damages to the areas they most understood, though.

He hadn't appreciated that observation, when she'd offered it. In the midst of pulling down her snow suit to examine the worst of her injuries, to see which might offer him the most of what he needed. At least, she'd thought it had been the observation he had not enjoyed. Now, looking at him, she thought it might have been something else.

She laughed. Again, she was laughing too much tonight, but she had to. He was so annoyed by it. His expression was so bemused. She laughed some more.

" _Valiant_ ," she said, absurdly pleased all over again. Absurdly pleased, and pleased by the absurdity. Valiant, he said, disgruntled by her lack of affect. She beamed at him. "Oh, not that, Mr Ionescu. Never that. It has nothing to do with courage."

And he looked at her some more. She could feel him. The thoughtful blackness of his eyes. He was a slim thing, this vampire, a slight, unthreatening thing, if you didn't know. She wasn't afraid of him. She never had been. And it truly had nothing to do with courage.

"Oh?" he asked, and there was amusement back in his voice. There was wryness. "If not courage, then what? To walk into the pit, and trust to monsters to pull you out again. To offer up your life's blood before you can be eaten. What is that, if not bravery?"

She lay back, stretched out her battered frame, and sighed happily. There was a sound in the air, now. A thrum of distant engines. An airplane. Salvation or damnation, depending on who it belonged to. The fires were dying down below them. They would be moving on from victory soon, one way or another. They would be moving on to other problems.

And all the pleasure of solving them.

"I told you," she said softly, resting her hands contentedly on her no-longer-bleeding stomach. "I enjoy this. All of this. Finding such problems. Solving them. There's no courage involved. Only curiosity. And ... _satisfaction_."

In the job. In the problems, and the solutions to them. In your enemies, and your allies. Moon slugs and vampires. Death and satisfaction. Oh yes. She would have to go into the field more often. It was different here. It had a different edge. As fascinating as pure research could be, a delightful rabbit hole of obscure knowledge and collected conjecture, there was something ... so much more _immediate_ , about field work. So much more ... visceral.

It was pleasing. She had said that. It was very pleasing. She was not disappointed at all.

And judging by the thoughtful expression in her enforced partner's eyes as he slowly lay down beside her ... It seemed neither, perhaps, was he. It was a hard thing to judge. He did inscrutable very well, Grigore Ionescu. It was difficult for her to see. But perhaps he was pleased enough to have been paired with her after all.

At the very least, she supposed, he had yet to eat her whole.


End file.
